


Planetary Motions

by imightbejehan



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Communication, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post-Canon, does it count as a fix it if they just fucking talk for once, is mentioned but?, jacobi likes candles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 13:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14449953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imightbejehan/pseuds/imightbejehan
Summary: Kepler's first law of planetary motions states that celestial bodies orbit elliptically. Sometimes, they are far away, but they always return to each other.





	Planetary Motions

**Author's Note:**

> this took me like two months to write. granted, i had an incredible amount of papers and a comic to write for school, but still. sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes.... i had to stop looking at this bc it was haunting my dreams. 
> 
> the recent AMA killed me THANKS NOAH
> 
> enjoy, someone had to write it.  
> and yeah, there's gonna be a second part because i'm never done forcing these fools to communicate.

Jacobi didn't know how to feel about the knocking on his door.

No. Scratch that. He knew exactly how to feel. There were plenty of words for it.

Annoyed. It was his down time now. A recording of the latest Chopped episode was queued up on the TV, ready for him to throw popcorn at it like it was some sports game and he actually cared who won and who lost.

Confused. He didn't have anyone left to knock on his door. Goddard would have just blown the door to bits by now. Only friends and unwanted salesmen knocked on people's doors. He had no friends, and he didn't want to think about what kind of salesman worked the streets at midnight.

Angry. It’s not every night he gets some peace and quiet, but it is every night that he longs for it. It’s not every night he gets a physical form to direct his rage on to.

Jacobi didn't know how to feel when he opened the door.

There was a pause, a moment that could be filled with 7.8 light years of space in which the words poised on the tip of his lips died and fell at his feet.

"What? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Jacobi didn't waste another moment before slamming the door shut.

"Well, I'm not about to say that was uncalled for."

One hand was on the lock, the other reaching towards his hip for a pistol that wasn't there. He cursed himself for getting soft. Too many months had gone by since the last scare. Too many months had gone by since he had seen the threat of Goddard Futuristics outside his nightmares.

Jacobi allowed himself a moment to relax. He slumped against the wood protecting him. His breath caught in his throat, a panic attack rising up to choke him on his own spit.

He always figured that Kepler would be the one to kill him, just didn't expect the man to rise up from the dead himself to do it. He coughed out a laugh and straightened up. He should have known that his fate was sealed from the start.

When he flung open the door, Kepler was still there. Neither made a move.

"You aren't-"

"No. I'm not."

Jacobi couldn't help but stare. It was a perfect replica, down to the very last detail. The small scar on his upper lip. The greyer hairs curving around his ears. The limp sleeve hanging on his right side.

"Looks like they kept a parting gift."

Kepler cracked a smile, no teeth, dead. He waved the stump. "I don't think they were ready to completely forgive me."

"Him."

The smile turned a little bit colder, and Jacobi thought, "Ah. There it is."

"Aren't you going to invite an old friend in?"

"You got any booze?" Kepler held up a brown paper bag. The wrinkling of the movement was loud enough to be deafening. "I'll grab the ice."

"Icey booze."

"Don't."

Jacobi left him at the door, heading into the kitchen. It was a small apartment, easy to cover in just a few wide strides, with even less to fill it with. He kept everything to a minimum, including dishes. There were two of each; one to use, one to be dirty. He filled two plastic cups with ice from the tray and headed back into the main room. Kepler was still standing there, staring out, surveying his surroundings. Kepler had always been analytical, meticulous, but now he just looked like a man out of place. The door was still open behind him.

"Sit." Jacobi motioned towards the small wooden table pressed flush against the wall. Two folding chairs sat opposite each other. He never pictured that Warren Kepler would be the first guest to sit in them when he picked them off the side of the road, but he had learned long ago to stop trying to expect things. He had long since given up control, and with it, expectations. He pushed the candles that littered the surface away to clear a line and dropped the glasses in the middle.

"Interesting collection." Kepler eyed the candles as he sat down.

"A habit." To make a point, Jacobi retrieved a match and lit a candle, half used up. He let the flame burn up the match and lick his nails until the dirt underneath them burned as well. The match dropped to the table between them.

Kepler, for his part, did not comment further. He pulled the bottle of whiskey from the brown bag, letting the paper drop to the floor, and cracked it open. The liquid spilled over the ice. Jacobi's first. Kepler's last. Always the proper man, no matter the situation.

But then again, this wasn't really Warren Kepler.

"So silent it could almost be out of character for you."

"Who knows, it’s been a long time. People change."

"No burning questions?" The ice knocked against the glass. A sharp ringing sound like the aftermath of a bomb. Jacobi allowed himself just a moment to lose himself in the smirk that met the lip of the glass. The ice shook again.

"Alright. I'll bite. Why the hell not, right? Nothing to lose, right?" Jacobi downed his own glass. "Tell me, enlighten me, what is Mr. Don't-Bring-The-Alien-To-Earth doing here hanging with such lowly humans such as myself?"

"I figured it couldn't do too much harm. Lovelace is here already, isn't she? What can one more alien do?"

"Not very Colonel Kepler of you."

"Well, I'm not Colonel Kepler."

"Okay-"

"Warren."

"Okay, Warren." Jacobi filled his pause by pouring more alcohol. He knew he would need it for his next question. "Tell me about it."

"What do you know?"

"Don't want to hear yourself talk? How unusual. Not even a good clone, huh, Warren."

The smirk dipped down a little. Jacobi mentally added a tally under his name.

"Someone told me once that I needed to learn when to shut up."

"Touche. An exchange then. I fill you in, and you can fill me in on what I missed." He waited for Kepler to give a small nod in agreement. "We found Rachel's body. Some people took more of a beating than expected and we - I was out scouting. Rachel was there, bled out against the airlock control panel. Pieced together the rest and got the fuck out of dodge."

"Pieced the rest together?"

"Yeah. It wasn't hard. Even an idiot like me could piece it together. A bullet wound, one person unaccounted for, an airlock right there just ready and waiting."

"And Eiffel -"

"Eiffel?" Jacobi let out a barking laugh, the flame in front of him flickering with the force of it. "What about him? Eiffel's a fuckin goner. There's nothing up there."

"Clarify."

"Hera had to do some shit up in his head because of Pryce. He lost basically every memory. Just got his name to him now, and the old logs Minkowski made him listen to."

"Gone. Interesting."

"Yeah, interesting is one way to put it."

Kepler had finally finished his glass. He replenished Jacobi's as he poured his own. "It must have been hard up there."

"Hard? Must have been hard? Yeah almost getting blown up was hard, losing my entire team was hard, hell losing my shitty ass job was hard. But y'know what? It's been so much fucking harder every day down here. I don't know if I would rather have died up there."

"Like me."

"Like him."

"You're telling me that you're jealous that you weren't the one who died? Didn't you want him dead?"

"Shut up. You can't say shit, dead man."

"So many mixed messages." The little smirk was back.

"Why did you come? How? Why couldn't you have just fucking left it how it was?"

“Young and I had ejected Bob's corpse just moments before. My - his - body ended up floating out the same airlock to meet it and it seems both got pulled into Wolf 359. I don't remember any of my time there, I just woke up. I remembered blacking out, feeling the bubbles forming in my blood before it all went dark, and then in the most benign way, I just woke up. I was gone, and then I wasn't, but I knew I wasn't the first Warren Kepler.

“They sent me down here. No commands, no messages to tell the president, just the clothes on my back and my name."

"And you decided that you would hit up your good ol' buddy?"

"Jacobi. You know that isn't what this is about."

"I know? I know? You certainly made sure I didn’t know jack shit up there, so why do you expect from me?"

"Jacobi."

"No, you don't get to "Jacobi" me! Explain Warren, please for once in your life explain it to me. For once in your goddamn life be honest with me."

"I wanted to know."

"What?"

"I wanted to know if you made it out."

"Well I did and now you know."

"And I wanted to know if you made it out okay."

Jacobi kicked back from the table, running a hand through his hair. It was loose from its usual ponytail, but his hair bands were in the other room. He could count on his hands how many times Kepler had seen it down.

"No. I didn't."

Kepler's gaze didn't waver. "That makes two of us then."

"Yeah well you aren't even real, so I guess you got a one up on me there."

"I'll drink to that."

They both took another gulp of whiskey. Jacobi set his glass down hard.

"Tell me, how does it feel to be an alien clone? Have you tried to off yourself yet?"

"I was thinking about trying that tonight, maybe you would like to watch?"

"Funny."

"That is what I'm known for."

Jacobi had to look away to hide his smile. "Farthest thing from it."

He watched Kepler pick up one of the empty tea lights scattered on the table. It hadn't melted properly, and the wax had stayed hard on the edges, leaving a hole in the middle with the stub of a wick. He squeezed the aluminum between his fingers, pinching until the wax cracked and it folded into an awkward shape.

"Why didn't you just join us?" The thought voiced itself like a whisper. The one question that had plagued Jacobi's mind since he saw Rachel with the bullet wound in her stomach and her bloody hand still on that airlock button.

"I needed to be on the inside. There were things that had to be done."

"Bullshit. We succeeded, didn't we?"

"Not without a little help."

"Warren, cut the shit."

"I couldn't. There was no way I could get on that ship, not with the way things were. You may have been willing to forgive me, but what about Minkowski? Lovelace? No one had any reason to let me return as one of the good guys and I accepted that the moment I started my mission."

"I'm not one of the good guys."

"No, but you weren’t the colonel either, Mr. Jacobi. It's much easier to forgive someone who was in the dark."

Jacobi lit another match and let the topic die with the flame. "Did you know, when you said goodbye, did you know?"

He took another big drink. The ice had all but completely melted, watering down their drinks, but they continued pouring them anyway. "I was pretty certain."

"Did you want to die?"

"No, not particularly, but I was prepared for it. It wasn't a question of whether or not I wanted something."

"I just - still - why?"

"Daniel." Kepler leaned forward, setting his hand down on the table, palm down. Jacobi stared down at it, the scars that littered the back, the fingernails cut to the quick. "It wasn't your fault."

"I know, I know. I just - I just don't know what I'm still doing here."

"For the record," Kepler started slowly, carefully, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I'm not Maxwell."

Jacobi took a deep, shaky breath. "It's not your fault. It's not even your fault she's dead, I guess."

"I'm sorry I'm not the colonel."

"It's cheating."

"Does it make you feel better?"

"The whiskey does if I drink it like water. Nothing else helps much." The candle was burning down, the wax was rising around the wick like it was trying to drown it, but it would never succeed. Jacobi stuck his finger in the liquid. It was hot, but never enough to hurt. He imagined what it must have been like to burn up in the star instead.

"Jacobi -"

"What's the plan now? You've seen me, got some drink outta it and your answers. Now what? Gonna go kick kids and steal candy from puppies?"

That smirk was back on Kepler's face, like they were back on the Hephaestus relishing in an inside joke that only they would ever understand. Jacobi spent four years chasing after that smirk. He knew every line, every tooth peeking out of it. "Oh, I have a few ideas. I got plenty of stories to tell, might try to share them."

"What makes you think people want to hear them?"

"It doesn't matter who wants to listen, just that I can tell them."

Jacobi scoffed. "I knew you just wanted to hear the sound of your own voice. You didn't give a shit if I was listening."

"Now Daniel, don't get ahead of yourself."

"Oh, I'm sorry, is that a sensitive subject for you?"

A beat. A pause. Kepler took in a breath. "Are you ever going to say something and stick with it? Or are you just going to keep saying things to get a rise out of people? Make up your mind."

"No! I'm not! That was always your job! I'm unprepared," Jacobi growled. He watched Kepler sit back in his chair. Watched his jaw clench and unclench before he spoke through gritted teeth.

"Get your head out of your ass. It was my job. It was a mission, and it was all of our jobs to get it done."

"The mission? The mission to ruin those people’s lives and let Cutter commit mass genocide for _funsies_?"

"It was no different from our previous missions."

"With all due respect, that's a load of bullshit. We both know it was so much bigger than that."

"We did what we had to do, Jacobi. Do you want me to tell you that what we were doing was just? Do you want me to sooth all your worries so that you can sleep at night? Face. The. Facts. We made the choice to play the game and we have to live with it."

"I wanted a friend." Jacobi hated the way it sounded in his head, hated it more when the words fell flat on the table and laid there like a dead fish.

"I was your commanding officer."

"God can you just - you were a person too. At least I used to think you were at some point."

"There was no time to be a person."

"There was no time? Fuck, we had plenty of time! Plenty of time while we were locked away on that ship and hell, plenty of time after you got knocked out of power, Sir, that you could have had one single moment of humanity."

"Should I have cried? Broken down and tried to destroy everyone because it wasn't going my way? I was a professional and I did my job."

"You shouldn't have made jokes about Alana's death. She gave her life for you. She was basically family! You should have trusted me. You shouldn't have let them carry me away and turn me into a dummy while you just watched. If not because you cared for me, if only because I was your loyal subordinate. You should have just told Rachel to fuck it, hell Minkowski too if she told you no. You shouldn't have floated out that airlock without complaint! You owed it to me to come back."

"I did what I had to do."

Jacobi's laugh was hysterical. "You played the game. And you didn’t even win!”

“I’m here now. Must’ve played something right.”

“Are you?” Jacobi slammed his hands on the table, toppling a few stray candlesticks. “Did you?”

Kepler fell silent. It was something he had done often in the years leading up to Maxwell joining the team. The yelling came later, with the harsh threats and frustration, but before Kepler had quietly analyzed. Jacobi had often theorized that he was running through possible conversations like a math equation, or even trying to read his mind. He remembered that sometimes, Kepler wouldn’t say anything until Jacobi had calmed down to what the SI-5 had deemed as acceptable levels of aggression. Jacobi had gotten used to the strange balance between a man that talked too much, and a man that wouldn’t utter a sound.

It had led to their own silent communication. Kepler would know what Jacobi was thinking, Jacobi would know what was needed from him. Years of getting someone to know you and thinking you know them too.

Now, it was a fresh start. This Warren Kepler wasn’t the same one all those years ago that had sat in a bar and given him a second chance. This was a new Warren Kepler, learning about him all over again. It was an awkward, fumbling sort of déjà vu; the kind where Jacobi already knew how it would all play out – yet knew that it could never be the same as it was before. It was almost like all the memories were a dream and this was a different reality where Goddard didn’t exist, and the Hephaestus mission never happened. But it did, and it had.

Finally, Kepler shattered the quiet. “How long has it been?”

“About five years.”

“That makes us the same age then, since –“

“Two years,” Jacobi interrupted, but Kepler didn’t protest. “Two more years and you would have been gone.”

“Three if you wanted to play it safe.”

“Fine, have it your way. It doesn’t make a difference. You still think you’re always right, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Sure act like you do.”

“A habit, I suppose. A way to play the long game.”

“Yeah well game is over, get a new gimmick.”

“Do you wish I would have stayed gone?” Kepler’s voice was soft enough that Jacobi almost fooled himself into thinking that the man was worried to voice his question.

“Do you know what grieving is like? Seriously, jokes aside on your lack of proper emotions, I want to know if you’ve ever felt like any grief at all.”

He took his time answering, savoring the words in his mouth carefully before he set them free into the world. “I had a dog once, back in my late teens and early twenties. A big black Doberman named Lady Macbeth who only lived to be around 7 years old. Lady was the only thing I had, so when she died I kept her collar with me for all my moving about the country. Bright red like blood and studded with crystals. And then I let it go. Burned it up in a fire with everything from my childhood when I entered Goddard for an initiation. “Learn to let the past die,” Cutter had said, so I did. There was nothing to grieve after that, after I killed everything that was Warren Kepler.”

“Now how would you feel if she came back? She waltz’s in through that same door you did and expects some food and tummy rubs, and how do you feel?” Kepler doesn’t respond, but Jacobi doesn’t want him to. He feels his momentum building again. “Just when you think you have been able to move on and start trying to live your life as a functioning human being coping with all the awful shit you did and all the awful shit that happened to you – and then it’s all torn away. Just like that. Back to square one. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars!”

“Jacobi – “

“You were dead!”

“Did you grieve me?”

“Don’t act so smug about it, asshole.”

“Jacobi.” Kepler’s serious voice had returned, loud and commanding. “It is a serious question.”

“Do you remember before the Hephaestus? The way we were – he and I – it was different. God it wasn’t good, but it was better than the way everything went to shit up there. I grieved so many times for Colonel Warren fucking Kepler. I grieved for the loss of the man I put everything into, the man I poured my life into, the man who dragged me to Christmas parties, and who remembered the day he picked me up in some nasty ass bar, the man who I trusted with my life, and to who I would have given my everything if he would have asked. And I grieved the loss of someone who hid from me, betrayed me, someone I didn’t really know.

“So yeah. I grieved for his sorry ass. But let me ask you, Warren, would he have grieved for me?”

“You won’t be happy with any answer I give you.”

“Wow excellent analysis, Colonel.”

“That’s your problem, Jacobi. You want to be angry. You don’t want to let go, no matter how much you say you may want to.”

“I have the right to be angry!”

“You do.” Kepler paused. It wasn’t his thinking silence, that much Jacobi could tell. It was his special silence that meant he knew something that you didn’t, and he may or may not tell you until the gun is already at your temple. “But then what?”

“What?”

The ice clinked in the glass Kepler rocked on the table. It was empty of liquor, and probably had been for the greater half of their conversation, Jacobi supposed.

“What after your anger? Will you achieve happiness through it? Will it bring you good fortune? Will you be able to continue your life because of anger?”

“Maybe!”

“Jacobi.” Kepler sighed his disappointed-in-Jacobi sigh, closing his eyes just slightly to squint at the man across the table.

“Does there need to be anything after anger? Yknow, it’s kinda become a whole quirk of mine and I’m afraid I might be unrecognizable to my fans without it.

“Look. All jokes aside, you comin up in here all ghost-of-jobs-past on my ass isn’t gonna solve my issues. You’re not my therapist and you wouldn’t even be a good one if you were.”

“I see your point.”

“But.”

“But, you say that you moved on when you quite clearly still have emotions over everything that happened.”

“Emotions? Jesus Christ, Warren. I’m never not gonna have emotions about it! The trauma isn’t gonna just go POOF and disappear!”

“So, talk about it.”

“To you? The man who dragged me into this fucking mess?”

Kepler leaned forward until the stump where his hand used to be rested next to his glass. “Who else would understand better?”

With a huff, Jacobi grabbed their glasses again and poured out another drink in each. “Y’know, I really hate it when you’re right.”

“I know.”

“That’s it for the night. I’m too tired and honestly somehow not drunk enough for this.” Jacobi downed the fresh glass, watching Kepler slowly do the same over the rim. Neither commented on the “next time” that hung in the air unspoken.

It was a habit he had when it came to Warren Kepler, something that had started from the first day they met at that shitty bar. That’s it for the night, next time he would tell him. That’s it for the night, next time he would kiss him. Next time he would make him talk about it. Next time he would punch that smug smirk right off of his face. Next time. And it kept on going right up until that last next time, when Warren Kepler walked away with a goodbye on his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if it's all super stilted and incoherent. this was written about one sentence at a time but i tried to make it work 
> 
> shrugs
> 
> i love them 
> 
> talk to me about w359 and how lovelace can kick my ass @ phantomtheives


End file.
